CH 32

Chapter 32 – A magical guide to planting…?

After taking the Summoning tutorial, I immediately went back to the Rental Production Facility and started the summoning ritual. Since its level will only be about half of my current skill level, I won’t be able to use it for blacksmithing-related things yet, but it can still help me out with other things.

For now, I decided to go with an alchemy-focused homunculus. It can make me some Small Life Potions, which are not only in-demand items, but also materials to making Concentrated Magic Liquid.

And so, I exclaimed, “Come, Homunculus!”

I don’t really need to say anything to do the summon, but it’s nice for setting the mood. Either way, I selected the Alchemy homunculus from the list of summons available.

During the tutorial, I learned that the summoning process will be stopped if you’re attacked, but since I’m not planning on fighting, this isn’t really a problem… Nonetheless, it takes three minutes for the homunculus to come out of the Magic Circle, so I had to wait for a small while.

Eventually, a small child that was about half my size appeared. I think that homunculuses were originally supposed to be pseudo life forms created by alchemy, but in Frontiers they’re just helpers called out by Summoning.

“Homun, can you make a Small Life Potion for me, please? You can use all the tools and materials here for it.” I asked it.

“Homun.” It answered, then started working on it.

I call it Homun because it is a homunculus… I can’t really name the summons, but I needed some way to refer to them, so that’s how it is.

Homun’s current level is 37, half of my Alchemy skill, which is 75. Seems like the game rounds things down for summons.

Though well, lv 37 is more than enough to make Small Life Potions, so there should be no issues.

It’s a bit of a shame that we can’t talk properly though. Most Summons have their own language, so our means of communication are limited… Well, it’s enough that they can understand instructions, and that I can get a gist of what they’re feeling by their expression as well.

While I was thinking about those things, Homun finished the first potion and started the next one. It seemed to be doing the crafting in the same way that I did, which was a bit cute.

… And the second potion was done. Was I this fast at crafting back when my Alchemy was lv 37? It can’t be that I was actually too slow, can it?

Let’s check the results just to be sure.

——

Small Life Potion

Item/3*/HP +50/3 uses

——

… Normal.

Well, that’s fine. The main purpose is just to gain skill points after all, so it’s nice that Homun is doing a good job… Though I’ll work hard to not lose to it!

******

As I worked on my crafting, I also used Discover and Concentration as much as I could. I didn’t really see any result with their level being this low, but I also had no problems with mana due to having recently evolved my Magical Power skills. Even Homun reducing my maximum mana was no big deal.

Of course, there’s no way I’d be able to say that if I was using this mana to fight, but I have no intention of joining battles, so this works just fine for me.

Either way, I ended up creating quite a few items, so I messaged my usual acquaintances telling them what were the items with two ‘Options’ that were created, then prepared to go to the store.

And while I did that, Homun ended up emptying my stock of ingredients, transforming them all into Small Life Potions… It really is fast after all. I had a pretty big stock of materisl with me before it started.

I had other materials available though, so I just asked Homun to work on something else once the Small Life Potions were done. I wish I could just give it some vague instructions and let Homun decide what to do according to what was needed, but only simple instructions work with Summons.

Moreover, its level is still low after all, so I can’t ask it to make more complex things… I could ask it to make Ingots, but the Bronze Ingots would all be of low quality, so that wouldn’t work for me, as I need high quality ingots to make items with two ‘Options’ after all.

I did consider asking it to make Copper Ingots, but that could get in the way of the newbie producers, and I don’t really want to be a harmful competition for the people that are just starting.

Due to that, I ended up giving up on asking Homun to do blacksmithing for now.

******

When I decided to leave the Rental Production Facility, I ended up realizing that Homun was a bit too conspicuous to take outside. There are people that take their summons around when they walk through the city, but none of them are producers… If I were to walk around with him, people would start associating the owner of Homun as me in no time, which would ruin the purpose of my disguise.

However, having a summon out is important, as that allows me to grind skill levels faster… Therefore, I dismissed Homun and summoned ‘Manthe’. A Homunculus made with the Improved Magic Strengthening skill. She was a lot shorter than Homun, so she was much easier to conceal.

… It was a bit of a bother that I was actually able to summon her already though. You can only summon a Homunculus with an evolved skill after it passes a certain threshold. Improved Magic Strengthening was lv 15, so it worked just fine… But my Improved Blacksmithing was lv 9, which was not enough.

I think the level threshold is 10, but maybe it varies for each skill… Nonetheless, the bothersome part is that my Blacksmith skill is not my best one anymore. I suppose it can’t be helped with me using Summoning, Discover and Concentration all the time to grind Magical Levels, but it’s still a bit frustrating.

… Well, gaining levels is always good though, so let’s look at this from the plus side.

Manthe is a very short, somewhat round, dark child. Its ability is to increase the mana regeneration of people in its surroundings.

It is nice that its effect is always active no matter what, but passive abilities like this get way less experience than something more active like what Homun was doing… Nonetheless, I can’t easily carry Homun around, so Manthe was the choice for when I was going out. I could easily hide it within my cape, so I didn’t need to worry about it being seen as I walked back to the store.

I think I should advertise the usefulness of summons in the forums though. They’re really convenient and could help the other producers out.

… And if enough producers start walking around with their own summons, I won’t need to hide my own summon within a disguise.

Regardless of that, by the time I arrived at my store, it was midnight on the in-game time, so my shop was obviously closed.

Rush was waiting at the entrance, so I greeted him and allowed him inside. Once we got to the break room, I introduced him to Manthe and sold some items with two ‘Options’ in it.

After that, however, Rush started asking me for advice. Apparently he is a pretty strong player, and his gear is top-notch since I’m providing him with quality stuff on a higher priority than normal customers.

Moreover, he was also someone that played the beta, so he is pretty used to the game as a whole by now. All this together led him to receive tons of clan invitations, and it’s being a real bother to him, so he is considering joining one.

It reminded me a bit of my own issues with clans, as well as how I now decided to accept Lolita’s invitation to the clan she intends to create, so I tried to give him some advice based on my own experience on this.

At that point though, Hime and Mika arrived. I figured it would be good to get their opinion on the matter too, so I told them about Rush’s predicament… When I did that, Mika invited Rush to the clan that was created by her party.

He decided to give an answer later after he has thought it over, but Mika’s party is filled with top players, so him being invited to it definitely attests to his skill. I already knew he was good even if I had never seen him fight, but this pretty much confirms it.

After that was handled, Rush immediately left, so I sold Magical Formations and equipment to Hime and Mika, then started our girls-only gathering… I guess he must have been embarrassed in an environment with three girls, so he didn’t feel like staying after his business was done.

Lolita didn’t join us today, but that was fine because the three of us had lots to talk about anyways.

With the main topic being, of course, the upcoming update. It’s coming in a bit more than a day in ‘real time’, or about four days of in-game time.

The announcement was really vague in regards to its contents, and I doubt that they’ll release a much more detailed announcement once the update is actually live. The management prefers to keep things succinct and let players find things out by themselves after all.

It’s a policy that some people dislike, but I personally enjoy it. Mika and Hime shared my thoughts on it. In the end, this is a game about being Pioneers after all, so it’s only fitting that we explore ‘Frontiers’ and find out the changes ourselves.

And like this, the three of us talked while wishing that the update could hurry up and come soon.

******

After 1h or so, we disbanded our girls-only gathering. I had to log-out and eat dinner, while them had their own things to do.

By the time I finished my ‘Real Life’ things and logged-in again, the library was already open, so I immediately re-summoned Manthe, put up my disguise and went to the library.

I kept on trying to use Discover on a lot of things, but I really got no information whatsoever… Until I got to the library that is. I got a small reaction from a weird book when I used Discover in it.

I picked it up and tried reading the title… ‘Magical Guide to Planting’…?

I had no clue what that title was supposed to mean, but there must have been a reason that Discover reacted to it, so I decided to read it… And when I did, I obtained a new Magic Circle recipe! I really need to use Discover on every inch of this library!

… Except the library is really big, so there’s no way that I can do this.

Well, no point in being too greedy. I read a whole book here already, so I decided to borrow a few more books and move one.

Thank you very much for all your help, library! I’m really indebted to you!